Beyond Interpretation

Book excerpt: Hailed as "important book certain to stir extended psychoanalytic debate" (American Journal of Psychiatry) on publication in 1979, Gedo's Beyond Interpretation set forth a radically new theoretical framework and clinical agenda for modern psychoanalysis. The theoretical framework revolved around Gedo's reconceptualization of human personality as a hierarchy of personal aims culminating in a "self-organization." The clinical agenda followed from the need for interventions that regularly went "beyond interpretation" in helping patients cope with primitive illusions, failures of integration, and traumatization. In this extensive revision of the 1979 text, Gedo refines his original formulations in light of the empirical findings and clinical advances of the past 15 years.